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Captain Lisa O'Brien, Entomologist - talks about experience and benefits: fun, opportunities to imporve, competitive or better pay, great opportunity to interact with colleagues in other professions, multi-dimensional task teams to conduct ...

If you are an entomologist in the private sector there are a lot of benefits that I would explain about joining the Army. First and foremost, the Army's a fun job and I can't give any higher recommendation than that. It's not stagnant, it's not boring, there are always opportunities to do things and go places and improve yourself.

But, if you're interested in some of the more mundane things, the pay is certainly competitive and often better than you would find in the civilian world. For example, I took a pretty good pay raise when I came into the Army after being a college professor for just two years.

Another interesting thing about being in entomology in the Army is that you do have a great opportunity to interact with colleagues in other professions. There are many times when we send out multi-dimensional task teams to conduct specific disease research.

For example, when Ebola virus first was detected, the Army sent out a mixed team of epidemiologists, entomologists, medical Officers, veterinary Officers, et cetera.

I'm learning a lot more about the general field of entomology. I'm also learning a lot more about managing people and working in entirely different countries.

The idea of travel is really totally appealing to me, as is the idea of changing jobs every two or three years because I do get bored very easily and this keeps me always on my toes?my learning curve is always very, very steep.

There's nothing that's more exciting than going to a new location, meeting new people, learning all about new jobs and new environments.